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Baldur's Gate 3 Steam Deck – Native Version

larian.com

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Re: Baldur's Gate 3 Steam Deck – Native Version

#31

Post by jakebasile »

snvzz wrote: post #2

(from the FAQ) >>Now that there is a Steam Deck Native build, is Baldur’s Gate 3 supported on Linux? >Larian does not provide support for the Linux platform. The Steam Deck Native build is only supported on Steam Deck. Only half a step forward.

This is extremely common. There's a vanishingly small number of games that officially support the Steam Deck that do NOT unofficially run on any given Linux box. That small number seems to be exclusively gacha games. A number of those can be made to run by setting `SteamDeck=1 %command%` as the launch command.

Anyways, BG3 runs perfectly fine, natively, on my Ubuntu 25.04 RTX 4090 rig.

Re: Baldur's Gate 3 Steam Deck – Native Version

#32

Post by verandaguy »

rfarley04 wrote: post #8

I really appreciate this. But color me skeptical that the late game will work on SD. It chugs on PCs. Hopefully they conjured a miracle!

I don't want to be one of those unbearable apologists in forum threads... but BG3's legitimately my favourite game, and IMO Larian have been excellent stewards, so I'll go up to bat for them here; have you played the newer patches?

For the first few months, act 3 (in the city) was legitimately hard to play. Performance, stability, visual glitches, all pervasive. But later patches did do a better job of improving those points.

Act 3's still the most intensive part of the game by far so on many setups it's still wise to at least crank down the crowd density, but it's come a long way since the launch version of the game.

Re: Baldur's Gate 3 Steam Deck – Native Version

#34

Post by bmurphy1976 »

kibwen wrote: post #24
rfarley04 wrote: post #8

I really appreciate this. But color me skeptical that the late game will work on SD. It chugs on PCs. Hopefully they conjured a miracle!

I played it on Steam Deck when it first came out (docked, standard HD display). It was perfectly acceptable, as long as you're fine with semi-stable 30 FPS and cranking down the graphics a tad. The only real problem that I encountered was that the game wouldn't recognize or remember my input settings, and would always default to controller-only, so I would have to attach a controller to navigate to the menu to switch…

It played tolerably until act 3, same with my M1 MacBook Pro. Act 3 was awful on both.

Re: Baldur's Gate 3 Steam Deck – Native Version

#35

Post by Gigachad »

shawnz wrote: post #18
ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It runs fine on a SD card on a steam deck for me. It is a good travel game.

To be clear, did you test the game in Act 3? Because Act 3 generally has significantly worse performance than other parts of the game

Tbh the vast majority of players never made it to act 3

Re: Baldur's Gate 3 Steam Deck – Native Version

#36

Post by hurricanepootis »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #15
snvzz wrote: post #2

(from the FAQ) >>Now that there is a Steam Deck Native build, is Baldur’s Gate 3 supported on Linux? >Larian does not provide support for the Linux platform. The Steam Deck Native build is only supported on Steam Deck. Only half a step forward.

Meh, useless purity check. Gaming on Linux is hard because there's not one Linux, there's tons of Linuses. What version of the glibc/libstdc++/mesa/xorg/wayland/kernel/drivers are you running? The Linux ecosystem is fragmented in such a way that only open-source and an army of volunteers can really work around. It is really not binary-friendly at a fundamental, philosophical level. (You're not going to get game compa…

Valve provides a common runtime/build environment for Linux devs in the form of the Steam Linux Runtime. There is version 1 (Scout), which uses an LD_PRELOAD system. There is version 2 (Soldier), which uses cgroups (podman) and is deprecated. Then, there is version 3 (Sniper), which is the current target.

As of right now, proton and proton-ge both build in and require Steam Runtime Version 3 to run in. The steam client itself is running in a runtime, and I think it is the scout runtime, so LD_PRELOAD based. This means that steam has its own common platform to "deploy" against, and all Linux native games have a common platform to deploy against.

It used to be that games had to be compiled in a chroot for Steam runtime 1.0, but now with Steam runtime 3.0, developers are heavily recommended to build their game in a "OCI-based container framework"—so podman basically—and enable the Steam Runtime 3.0 on steam. I know that TF2 and Dota 2 use steam runtime 3.0, and apparently so does Retroarch. Of course, since there is a podman/docker image, you can also test existing games to see if they run in the runtime too.

You can find a lot of more information about the steam runtime 3.0 here: https://gitlab.steamos.cloud/steamrt/sniper/sdk

Valve has a gitlab with lots of great docs for developers who want to publish a linux native game.

I think all native linux games will run in the Scout 1.0 runtime by default

Edit: I will say that as an end-user, running an up-to-date Linux kernel and Mesa stack is important for gaming. I know some people who run Mint and are surprised that their Radeon RX 9060 runs like ass. As long as you aren't using a Debian based LTS distro, like mint or ubuntu lts, or you are running those distro but get a newer kernel, you should be fine. This matters less for older hardware, but having a newer kernel and especially a newer mesa version is important.

Re: Baldur's Gate 3 Steam Deck – Native Version

#38

Post by Gigachad »

saubeidl wrote: post #13
snvzz wrote: post #2

(from the FAQ) >>Now that there is a Steam Deck Native build, is Baldur’s Gate 3 supported on Linux? >Larian does not provide support for the Linux platform. The Steam Deck Native build is only supported on Steam Deck. Only half a step forward.

I bet it still works , it's just not supported . It's just arch on an AMD chip after all.

SteamOS isn’t just Arch, it’s significantly custom and doesn’t have access to the arch repos.

The window manager, package manager, etc are completely custom. The OS is a read only image based system.

Re: Baldur's Gate 3 Steam Deck – Native Version

#39

Post by nsagent »

Bought the game when it came out, but still haven't had the time to play. Just flew out for a three week vacation with my Steam Deck in tow. Unfortunately, I left it on the plane and I haven't heard back from lost and found yet (seems unlikely I'll get it back considering it was an international flight). Oh well.

Re: Baldur's Gate 3 Steam Deck – Native Version

#40

Post by jsheard »

nsagent wrote: post #39

Bought the game when it came out, but still haven't had the time to play. Just flew out for a three week vacation with my Steam Deck in tow. Unfortunately, I left it on the plane and I haven't heard back from lost and found yet (seems unlikely I'll get it back considering it was an international flight). Oh well.

If it's any consolation, the Deck LCD is discounted by 20% for the next few weeks if you need to pick up a new one.
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